eTPS — Effective Tokens Per Second: A Better Way to Measure Local LLM Performance

We're obsessed with raw tokens per second. Every hardware post leads with it. Every quantization comparison is ranked by it. It's the one number everyone agrees to report. It's also measuring the wrong thing. Raw TPS tells you how fast tokens hit the screen. It tells you almost nothing about how quickly you get a correct, usable answer. On sustained, multi-turn workflows, that gap becomes massive. A faster model that hallucinates, requires multiple corrections, and forgets context you gave it earlier can easily be less useful than a slower model that gets it right the first time.